It's Time To Move On
by LadiesMile
Summary: This is my idea of how Covert Affairs should end. It is a sequel to my previous story "Heart to Hearts Require Talking" (published May 22 through May 27, 2014). It consists of three chapters, but there are two versions of Chapter 3.
1. Chapter 1: Old Friend

**A/N:** This is a sequel to my story "Heart to Hearts Require Talking," which was published in May 2014, before Season 5 began. So "It's Time to Move On" does not follow Season 5 canon. Rather, it assumes that the following things took place in or shortly before January 2014 (as they did in "Heart to Hearts Require Talking"): Joan became DCS, Calder became head of the DPD, Annie returned promptly from Hong Kong and resumed her affair with Auggie, and an OC named Clara Weinberg entered the picture. Nonetheless, I do refer in this sequel to some canonical Season 5 plot elements, including the Chicago bombing and Annie's myocarditis.

**Covert Affairs** is the property of USA Networks. I don't own any of the characters in this story except Vijay Rajagopalan and Clara Weinberg.

**Old Friend**

Thursday, November 6, 2014

It had been more than two years since that phone had rung. Three rings before he felt steady enough to answer it and stay on script.

"IT department. Anderson speaking.''

"Auggie?"

"Who is this?''

"Auggie, it's Vijay. From Stanford. Vijay Rajagopalan."

So much for the Smithsonian script. What a blast from the past!

"Wow. It's great to hear from you, man. How are you?"

"Fine. Great," Vijay said awkwardly.

They'd graduated in June 2001 but had lost touch a few years later, as Auggie went deeper and deeper into a life in which his college friends had no place. At Stanford, they had been roommates and best buddies, part of a close-knit group of high-achieving Computer-Science majors. The last time they'd seen each other was in the winter of 2003, when Vijay's twins were just a few months old; afterward, it had been occasional email and then not even that.

"I'm still at Google, still married to Neera. Sanjay and Hema just turned 12."

"That's wonderful," Auggie said. "Wish I had something like that to report. You ever see any of the old gang?" Best not to dwell on his own life, which was a bit of a mess and, for the most part, classified.

"Sometimes. Most of them live here in the Valley. Do you ever get out here?"

"Once in a blue moon for work," Auggie said. "Not for hiking in the redwoods any more, much as I used to love it. I don't know whether you heard, but I …"

"Yeah, I heard about what happened in Iraq. I'm so sorry, man. I should have reached out to you then."

"Hey, forget it. I've adjusted. I've got some amazing toys that let me do everything I could do with computers when I could still see – more, actually."

"Yeah, that's something I want to talk to you about," Vijay said mysteriously. "Would you like to come for a visit? We could get the old gang together – most of it, anyway. Neera would love to see you, too. We can even check out some redwoods, if you don't mind hiking with a guide."

It sounded great. Best idea he'd heard all year.

**###**

When Vijay's call had come in, Auggie had been sitting at his workstation – spaced out, not getting anything done. He'd been doing a lot of that lately. Curiously, he wasn't brooding over losing Natasha yet again. It was the third time that she'd disappeared from his life and the second time that she'd done so voluntarily. By now, he wouldn't be surprised if their paths crossed again in a few years.

Instead, he was feeling guilty about Hayley. "You _used_ me. I was just another op," she'd said when she returned the stuff he'd left at her place. "And then you broke it off, because I wasn't necessary any more."

He'd given her the standard user's excuse: "It's more complicated than that." But he knew it wasn't. Deliberately and with Joan's blessing, he _had_ used Hayley. He'd used her to get inside information about NCTC's investigation of the Chicago bombing. He'd used her to try to protect DCS personnel, including Annie and himself. Hayley's professional dedication, her personal decency, and her genuine affection for him were crystal clear; he had taken full advantage of them, ignoring how much that would hurt her.

He'd used scores of people over the years, and it usually hadn't caused him a moment's regret. He had just kept his head in the game, convinced that his small bad had served the greater good. Now it didn't feel so small; it just felt dirty. He didn't want to be that kind of person any more.

He had at least a month of use-it-or-lose-it vacation that would expire at the end of the year. Time to tell Joan and Calder that he would be taking some time off to visit an old friend in California.

**###**

Thursday, November 20, 2014

At dinner in Vijay's spacious home in Portola Valley, Auggie felt more relaxed and optimistic than he had in ages. When he'd arrived in the Bay Area a week earlier, he'd fallen immediately back into easy-going friendship with Vijay and his wife Neera; she had been Auggie and Vijay's classmate at Stanford and was now a partner in a patent-law firm in Palo Alto. She and Vijay had dated during their junior and senior years, much to the dismay of Vijay's parents in Madras, who had assumed that they would choose a mate for him, with the help of their extended family. They would never have chosen Neera, who had grown up in the thriving Indian-immigrant community in Edison, NJ, and seemed entirely American to Vijay's parents.

But they had come around when Vijay and Neera insisted on getting married right after graduation. Lingering regrets had vanished completely when Neera unexpectedly got pregnant during her second semester of law school. Vijay's parents had moved to California to care for the twins Sanjay and Hema while Vijay and Neera worked long hours at their high-powered careers. Twelve years later, they were a model extended family. Having joined Google right out of college, three years before its IPO, Vijay's career so far had been fascinating and lucrative; his parents were still with him, but they now lived in their own well appointed cottage on the Portola Valley estate. Both children were brilliant computer whizzes, bursting with energy and curiosity, and very polite to their elders, including Auggie. Family dinners had been delightful all week; Auggie had managed not to dwell on rediscovered longing for the kind of life that almost no one in the CIA had.

He'd rediscovered the gift of friendship as well as home life. He and Vijay had gone hiking in the Santa Cruz Mountains with their buddies Max, Sam, and Peyton from Stanford. When they'd arrived, Auggie had allowed himself a moment to be dazzled by the mist, the smell, the sounds – everything about the feel of the place – then figured it was time to tell his friends that he didn't know how they expected him to hike when he couldn't see. Before he could say a word, the group had set out on its old-favorite trail, and Max had offered Auggie a perfect sighted lead. Then he'd remembered. "Your mother," he'd said to Max. "Yeah," Max had said. "She came to parents' weekend one year. You met her. She's blind since birth."

Vijay's twins had spent much of the dinner talking to Auggie about computers. He was surprised at how interested they were in his own user experience and how there was a lot more to it than off-the-shelf voice recognition and speech-to-text. Just as they were finishing desert, Hema explained.

"Our cousin Padma is blind. We want her to be able to do all the cool stuff that we do."

Auggie grinned. "Maybe I can help with that." He was about to offer to install some of his own tools on their machines when Neera asked the children to help her clear the table.

"Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that," Vijay said. "Let's go to my study."

TBC


	2. Chapter 2: New Job

**New Job**

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

The day before Thanksgiving, Annie sat at her desk, putting things in order. How her desk kept getting _out of_ order when she used it so rarely had always been a mystery to her and would probably always be one.

The long, holiday weekend away from work was a welcome prospect. She couldn't remember when she'd last had time for bubble baths, detective novels, movies, shoe shopping – everyday things that she'd taken pleasure in since she was a girl. When had she become a workaholic?

But all that hard work had paid off, and she was happier than ever with her chosen career. She'd been disoriented and gun shy when she first returned from Hong Kong, but Joan had soon guided her back into the swing of things. Since then, Annie had gone from strength to strength. Most importantly, she had been taken under the wing of Clara Weinberg.

In January, Joan had introduced Clara as "an east-Slavic language expert who's been seriously underutilized since the end of the Cold War" and asked Annie to work with her on a review of the CIA's Ukrainian portfolio. At first, Clara played the role of a small, plump, 60-something woman very well – the kind of person whom no one but her close associates would notice. Then came a slow, steady stream of clues that she was not what she seemed.

Rather than simply "reviewing" the Ukrainian portfolio, Clara supplied crucial information that was not in the files (or at least not in the ones that Annie was cleared to work on). Using half a dozen aliases, she drew on assets in Ukraine and in Russia. She hacked into computers and eavesdropped on electronic communications all over the world, giving Annie an invaluable lesson in the truth about surveillance ("you really need to know what you're looking for – otherwise, the take is likely to be a massive pile of misleading crap"). Rather than an underemployed relic of the Cold War, Clara was a master spy whose job skills and reservoir of trust in the company had grown steadily since she was recruited in the '70s.

Like Annie and Joan, she had started as a field operative and had worked many ops that involved seduction and lethal violence. When she outgrew that stuff, both physically and psychologically, Clara had not moved into an executive position (in Annie's words, "become a paper pusher") as Joan had. She had continued to work as a spy – in the field on ops that required foreign languages, cultural knowledge, and people skills (all typically a lot more useful than sex and violence) but also at her desk as an analyst and as a tech operative. Almost no one in the intelligence world excelled at field work, at mastering and adapting new technology, and at analyzing both humint and data. That made Clara Weinberg an invaluable CIA resource, for internal operations as well as external.

It was at the end of March that Annie finally saw Clara in full. Things in Ukraine had moved beyond Maidan protests and the ouster of Yanukovic. There was going to be an election, and the CIA had a favorite candidate: the chocolate magnate Poroshenko. Clara knew all the players, still had a network up and running in Ukraine, and figured that she could exploit Russians doubling in Ukraine just as she had exploited Russians doubling in the west during the Cold War. Annie spent most of the Spring in Ukraine, with Clara in her ear. This was espionage on an elite level that was new to her. And it all panned out: Poroshenko had won handily, was beholden to the CIA for his victory, and knew it.

It was impossible to attribute magical powers to Auggie after she'd seen Clara in action. Still, Annie missed him terribly. Her only regret about the events of the past year was that things were still awkward between them.

His screen name appeared on her phone just as she was locking up her desk for the long weekend.

"Hey," she said. "I was just thinking about you."

"Good. I want to talk to you."

"Sure. I'm here at my desk for a change. Come by."

"Not at your desk," he said provocatively. "You know the Starbucks on Chain Bridge Road?"

"Yeah, I've been there. But why …"

"Good," he interrupted. "I'm in a taxi not far from there. Meet me there in 10 minutes."

**###**

"Café latte at your two o'clock," she said, sitting down across from him and taking the first sip of her own latte. "So there's a Starbucks at Langley. Why are we meeting here?"

She was teasing, of course. It was great to be sitting across from him in any Starbucks. They'd given up on being lovers in March, unable to get off the emotional roller coaster that was making a real union impossible – despite the fact that Henry Wilcox, the man who had thrust Annie onto the roller coaster, had been dead for months. Then she had been in Ukraine for months, with Clara as her handler and basically no contact with Auggie. During the Chicago-bombing investigation, she'd not exactly acted happy for him about either Natasha or Hayley, and he'd not exactly given Ryan the benefit of the doubt. It wasn't clear how they'd feel about each other once Natasha, Hayley, and Ryan had all moved on.

But here they were, and she felt like she was having coffee with her best friend. There was nowhere else she'd rather be.

"I need to tell you something important," he replied, "and I'd rather not do so in Langley."

"Sounds intriguing. What's up?"

"I'm leaving the CIA."

"What?" She hadn't seen that coming. As soon as he said it, though, she realized that he'd been less and less visible and active at work since the wrap up of the Chicago-bombing case. No wonder he'd been so vague about his recent vacation; he must have been job hunting.

"I've been offered an amazing job at Google. More than triple my CIA salary, plus the possibility of big performance bonuses. Substantial help on breaking into the Bay Area housing market. And the chance to head up a project that's perfect for me and to recruit top people for my group."

"A project that's perfect for you?" She was dumbfounded. What could be more perfect for Auggie than CIA technical operations? He didn't give her time to wonder.

"Web technology for the visually impaired. Inventing it, developing it, and integrating it into all of Google's services."

He was right – it was perfect. He'd created all kinds of ingenuous hardware and software for his own use at work ever since an IED had blinded him in Iraq. There must be millions of people who could finally experience the Internet in full if they could use the tools he had built.

"Auggie, that's _fantastic._ How did you even know Google was looking for … umm … ''

"A blind geek?" He finished the question for her and grinned. "I was recruited by an old friend from Stanford. Vijay – he was my roommate, actually. We lost touch, and I hadn't even thought about him in ages, but apparently he's kept an eye on me all these years."

"Does he know you're CIA?"

"I wouldn't say he '_knows_' for a fact. I never read in any of my college friends. But he didn't believe that I was head of the Smithsonian IT department."

"Even though that's what he found when he Googled you?" She had recovered enough for irony. But not for acceptance. He was leaving. She was losing him.

Auggie laughed and went on with his theory. "He knew that I'd joined the marines and that I was in Iraq. He knew I lived in DC. So he figured that I '_worked for the government_' in the type of job that requires elite military training and extensive tech expertise."

"But what made him think you'd want to quit such a job?"

"It doesn't work that way in the tech industry, Annie. No one waits until you announce that you're looking for a new job. If a company wants you, it reaches out and makes you a can't-refuse offer."

She put her hand over his. He looked like the happy, confident Auggie she'd met years ago, not the stressed-out, ambivalent Auggie whom she'd worked with on the Chicago bombing. She wanted to share his happiness, but all she could feel was the loneliness that was about to envelope her.

"So you're starting a whole new life."

"Actually, I'm kinda resuming my old life. I always expected to have a career in Silicon Valley after I graduated from Stanford. Then I got diverted by 9/11, special forces, Joan's and Arthur's fast-tracking me in the DPD, …, the whole James Bond fantasy."

Here their experience differed. She'd been out of college for years by the time Joan and Arthur recruited her, and her life had been utterly directionless. She'd have no Plan A to go back to if her CIA career ended now.

But she didn't need to bring that up in the middle of his story. "It's been a great adventure," he continued, "but, as a wise friend of mine once said, James Bond wound up a lonely old man."

Leave it to Auggie to remember that she had once understood (and had even warned him) that single-minded devotion to field work might make a full life impossible.

"I can't imagine Langley without you," she said. "I can't even imagine enjoying a latte without you."

"Come with me."

She pulled her hand away. She was still reeling from the shock of his leaving the CIA, and here was something even more shocking.

"Start over with me. Just as friends if you want. Or we could get back together if you want. Or we could get married."

She spit a mouthful of lukewarm latte, half into the cup and half onto the table. The initial shock wave had crested, and she had a sneaking suspicion that she was taking the bait by replying. "Did you just propose to me? Auggie, we didn't exactly succeed as a couple. What the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about being ready to settle down and have a family. I'll be thirty-five soon. I've spent about half my life waiting for the perfect woman. I was even convinced a few times that I'd found her and fallen in love with her. But I didn't '_exactly succeed as a couple_' with any of you."

"Yeah, that sounds a lot like my own romantic history."

He took her hand again. "Maybe waiting for the perfect partner is foolish at our age, Annie. Maybe we should both just choose someone who's imperfect but great … then make a decision and get on with it."

"Auggie, I'm a field operative. I'm based out of Langley."

"There's a CIA field office in San Francisco. You might even be able to wangle a promotion out of the move – spin it as being willing to relocate to an office in which experienced operatives are scarcer than they are at Langley."

Well, so much for baiting me, she thought. He's serious. He's thought it all through, and he wants me to move to California with him. Holy shit.

"Or maybe you should think about getting out of the field, Annie," he continued. "It's not a good place to be for an entire career. Joan was one of the agency's best field operatives in her day, but she knew when to move on to something else. You've had a few huge wins lately. Why not go out on a high note?"

Go out? Would she ever go out … ever leave the field altogether? She flashed back on the flight home from Mexico City, when Joan had explained why her old partner Megan Wilkons was en route directly to the next dangerous mission: "There are agents who are needed in the field, and there are agents who need the field."

Auggie was so beautiful and strong, and he didn't need anything except his wits about him. He knew it was time to move on. Could she ever …

Her phone rang. "Hi, Joan."

"Annie, how soon can you be in my office? Clara and I have something important to tell you."

"I'm at the Starbucks on Chain Bridge Road. Leaving right now. I'll be there as soon as I can."

Maybe they were sending her out again, and she'd be able to ignore everything that Auggie had just thrown at her for a while. It didn't sound like that, though.

"Sorry, Auggie. I have to go."

TBC


	3. Ending 3A: Starting Over With You

**Starting Over With You **

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Annie has realized that she does not need the field. She does not need the CIA at all. Clara and Joan had come clean about the five-month internal op they had run on her. It started with Clara's monitoring Annie day and night while they were working on the Ukrainian review: every keystroke, every mouse click, every file, and every phone call. After the lone-wolf manner in which Annie had dealt with Henry Wilcox, Joan had not been ready to welcome her back into the fold until an expert had assessed her thoroughly; no one was more of an expert than Clara. Arthur had been read in, but Auggie hadn't.

Annie knows she can't live this way. She can't let the core of her life be secrets and lies.

"Five months?," Annie had asked Clara. "But I was in Ukraine half of the time."

"Annie, that was my Ukrainian network you were working with. Those were my Russian doubles. I had eyes on you all the time."

Annie's heart had started to ache. Not the chest pains and irregular breathing that she'd had to cope with since she was stricken with myocarditis. This was the heartbreak of betrayal, of learning that the first person she'd ever wanted as a role model had been lying to her since day one.

"How could you have done that, Clara? I thought we were friends. I hoped we would keep working together and that you would be my mentor."

"I would love for us to work together, Annie. You have everything it takes to be a master spy," Clara said carefully. "But, as your mentor, I'd have to be sure you understood that your top priority is the mission – not your friends."

It was the same pain she had felt all those years ago in bed in Sri Lanka. Reaching sleepily for Ben, expecting a passionate embrace, she had found only a note: "The truth is complicated." Full circle. Her life in the CIA was ending as it had begun, in hurt and betrayal.

She sat for as long as she felt she could, absorbing the shock; then she walked slowly to the door. As she opened it, Joan said "Annie, I'm sorry." Clara just looked calmly at her and said nothing.

"Goodbye, Joan." She closed the door behind her.

**###**

She tells Auggie that she'll go with him to Silicon Valley, just as a friend for now. He's happy with that arrangement. He knows that he doesn't need the emotional turmoil of renewed romance while he copes with a new job, a new home, and the challenge of getting around without good public transportation. Annie will be more helpful with all of that than anyone else could possibly be. Their time for romance will come soon enough if it's the right thing for them.

She has no idea what she'll do professionally – only that it won't be anything in the intelligence field. Danielle has lived in the Bay Area for years and still doesn't know that Annie is alive. Annie decides that she'll start her new life by reaching out to her sister; Auggie will be there for her through what's bound to be a traumatic reunion.

It's their last day in DC, and almost all of their possessions are in a moving van on its way to Palo Alto. She brushes her teeth and slips the toothbrush and toothpaste into the one suitcase she had packed for their leisurely cross-country drive.

"Ready?," she asks him. He smiles, hoists his duffel bag over his right shoulder, and holds out his left arm for her sighted lead.

Seated behind the wheel of the Corvette, she sticks the key in the ignition but doesn't turn it. "You're not changing your mind, are you?," he asks after 10 seconds tick by in silence.

"No, I'm just wondering whether you've finally made up _your_ mind. Not about the final destination but about what route we're taking. You've been so secretive about where you want to stop along the way."

"I'm not sure where to stay tonight, …"

"Auggie, it's show time! Can you at least tell me whether to turn left or right when we exit the garage?"

"… but figure on spending tomorrow night in Chicago."

"Chicago?"

"Glencoe, actually," he says nervously. "I think it's time for my family to meet my best friend."

The End


	4. Ending 3B: Moving On Without You

**Moving on Without You**

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Annie grabs her shoulder bag and car keys. She walks to the front door of her home but stops in the foyer to stare at herself in the mirror. There's no mystery about why she looks and feels so comfortable in her own skin. Never has she been so clear on what she wants long term or so confident in her ability to achieve it. She and everyone she works closely with have her pegged as the next Clara.

She'd panicked for a moment after learning that Joan and Clara had run an internal op on her for five months. But she quickly realized that they had done the right thing. Before they could welcome her into the most elite ranks of the espionage world, they had to be completely sure of her – sure not only that she had the right instincts and the right skills but that she could work in a team, stick to a plan, and keep the big picture in mind. Their reading her in on the fact that they'd tested her and that she'd passed with flying colors was a right of passage; she was one of them now.

She drives to Auggie's place, and they head to Dulles for his flight to SFO. It's a "corporate move" and a high-level one at that; so everything's been professionally packed and shipped, and the boxes have been unloaded in his new home in Palo Alto. Vijay has promised to come over with his brilliant, indefatigable twelve-year-olds to help unpack and set everything up. All Auggie needs for the journey is his messenger bag and white cane.

"I can't believe you're not pissed off about Clara's lying to you that whole time," he says while they drink beer in the terminal, waiting for his (delayed) flight to board. Because she was accompanying a blind passenger, the TSA hadn't required her to have a boarding pass to get through security.

"Joan's and Arthur's lying I know you're used to," he adds.

"Oh come on, Auggie. Who am I to judge?," she says, relieved no longer to be trying to make him think she's an angel. "I'm a covert employee of the CIA, hoping to be one for the rest of my life. Secrets and lies are the core of my job description."

"Yeah, and you're really good at your job."

"Hey, you're really good at it, too," she shoots back. "And time was it didn't bother you the way it does now. The only difference between us is that I still feel the way you did back then." She left unsaid what she really thought: I'm better at this than you are, Augs. No one who's as sweet as you are could be the next Clara.

"Besides, that op that Clara ran on me did me a world of good. She convinced Joan and Arthur that I'm not an irredeemable lone wolf, and she convinced me to trust Joan with the facts about my heart condition after I had that monster attack in our office."

Auggie chuckles. "I bet Joan's really proud of herself. Neither of the previous male DCSes would have designed protocols for a field operative with myocarditis. Arthur would have sat you behind a desk, and Henry would have blackmailed you into doing all sorts of dirty work."

"No doubt," she says. "And, if I'd tried to hide my condition from Joan, she'd have found out eventually and fired my ass."

Finally, it's time for him to board the flight. She walks with him to the boarding gate, where the flight attendant announces that "first-class passengers and anyone needing special assistance may board at this time."

"That's you," she says, releasing him from their embrace.

"On both counts. Google's been incredibly generous with moving expenses." He smiles, squeezes Annie's hand, and turns so that he's approximately facing the flight attendant as she says "Mr. Anderson, right? My name is Cathy, and I'll be happy to help you board."

After watching Auggie and Cathy disappear onto the jet way, Annie gets a cup of coffee and sits in the waiting area, staring at the plane. General boarding takes forever, but eventually she watches the plane push back and turn toward the runway. Part of her wants to stay and watch it take off – to put a final punctuation mark on the phase of her life that had just ended, one in which Auggie had been essential. But she can see that Dulles is still backed up and that his plane is the latest to join a long queue. Time to head to the office if she wants to get anything done today.

Less than half a mile from the parking lot, she gets a call from Joan.

"Hi, Joan. I just saw Auggie off on his flight to California," she says. "I'm on my way to Langley. What's up?"

"Turn around and board the next flight to Kiev," Joan tells her. "From there, you'll be going on to Donetsk."

Annie's head was back in the game instantaneously. Another potential crisis in Ukraine. Clara would be her handler.

In the official history of the decade following the end of the Cold War, Ukraine relinquished its entire nuclear arsenal in 1994. CIA intel, much of it obtained by Clara on the ground in the late '90s and updated regularly, indicated that weaponizable, enriched uranium and old but serviceable hardware components were still to be found in the nooks and crannies of the Donbas. According to current chatter, some of this stuff was now in the hands of Russian-supported, east-Ukrainian rebels. Annie's mission is to neutralize that threat.

Joan tells her that she'll be working with a partner who's booked on the same flight in the seat next to hers. He's bringing a file with all the details and a suitcase with clothes, toiletries, and both inhalable and injectable versions of her heart medicine.

"Check in as soon as you get to the safe house in Kiev. Good luck, Annie."

"Thanks, Joan."

Annie boards the plane just in time. Joan had not given her a chance to ask whom she'd be working with. But did she really need to? There was only one choice for a partner on a potentially deadly op in a volatile region – a partner who would trust her even after learning about her myocarditis. She sits in the aisle seat next to him.

"Hello, Ben."

The End


End file.
